Afterwards
by Orangeblossom
Summary: Scully and Skinner try to figure out the next step in their relationship.


Afterwards

_Scully:_

I awake with a start, disoriented. A lit bedside lamp reveals unfamiliar contours, stark black and white, and a hundred motel rooms blur in my mind as I sit up and try to concentrate on small pieces, things I can fit together to tell me where I am. I look down and see that I fell asleep reading the latest issue of _The Lancet_, that I'm wearing a t-shirt several sizes too large for me instead of my usual traveling pajamas. But it's not my vision, it's my sense of smell, evoking an unmistakable person, that finally snaps it all back into place.

I'm in Walter Skinner's bedroom.

Everything about him and me — even, apparently, the word "us" — is still too new. We'd spent one night having passionate, incredible, mind-blowing sex and discovered tonight at dinner as we tried to make conversation after a long day at work that we didn't really know what to talk about. How do you reveal yourself to someone when you want him to know you better? What do you reveal? How do you get someone else to reveal himself to you without pushing, without presuming? I wanted to lose myself in his arms again, it was so much easier to do that than admit that everything before and after that was so uncertain. But when he got a call and told me he had a little more work to do, I didn't insist he be with me instead.

This thing, whatever it is, feels so fragile. And I don't want to be the one to break it.

I put the medical journal on the nightstand and reach up to turn off the lamp — and then I hear his voice.

That must be why I woke up in the first place, I realize, pushing aside the not-quite-familiar covers. He's talking loudly, his voice hoarse, but I can't make out any words. I grab my gun and move carefully to the top of the stairs.

The lights are on, and I see him on the sofa, sitting bolt upright, several files and his glasses fallen to the floor. Puzzled, I go downstairs with my back to the wall, gun drawn, scanning carefully. He's alone.

And then I realize by the cadence of his words that he's giving orders of some kind but I'm not familiar enough with the military terminology to know what he's saying. His eyes are wide open, seeing something I can't, fighting a life-and-death situation with incredible urgency but things aren't moving fast enough, he has to repeat himself and I can tell by his voice that it's not going to be enough—

I drop to my knees beside him and close his eyes. "It's okay. It's over." I grab his hand and hold tight. "It's done; you're home now. It's all over."

He goes quiet. I press my hand to his forehead, easing him back down on the sofa, and then look at his face. I think something's calmed, maybe. I can't be sure. It's funny how years of confronting him, deferring to him, hiding things from him, defying him, have made me a student of every nuance of anger on his face. And I've never known that even in his sleep he frowns, concentrating, focused. Maybe in time I might come to understand all his expressions, to know the subtleties that indicate amusement, peace of mind…

I find I can't — won't — think beyond those words, to anything else his face might tell me. I feel like I've already trespassed, hearing a dream I probably wasn't meant to, that he wouldn't have chosen to share with me. I have no right to anything else.

But I don't want to leave him just yet. My hand still in his, I place my gun under the sofa within easy reach and settle down on the floor, pulling the t-shirt over my knees and burying my feet as well as I can in the deep pile of the carpet. I lean my cheek against the sofa, near his shoulder. I wonder if he'll tell me about his dream.

* * *

><p><em>Skinner:<em>

_You're home now…_

The house is long like a rail car, and I'm walking between the long side of it and a high wooden fence over which tree branches droop. I look in every window, curious. Hardwood floors. Antique fixtures. High-ceilinged rooms with wall sconces lit. I climb up on some sort of box, the better to see inside. And I notice the window is open.

I step inside, knowing that I'd never been allowed in before but that somehow I'm welcome now. I walk through the room to the kitchen beyond, which seems half in forest, half indoors — the far wall is glass, and lets in light through thick leaves. It's warm there, and quiet. I cross the large room and go through a door at the far end into a smaller room, darker, an upright piano against one wall. I keep going.

My father is in the next room, wrapped in an old blanket, a baseball cap on his head, watching television. He looks up, acknowledging my presence casually, and goes back to his program. In the next room after that is my mother, her legs tucked underneath her as she does a crossword puzzle with the help of one of my old grammar school teachers. A cousin I haven't seen in years runs by me and grabs my hand, dragging me from room to room until we reach the last room at the end of the house, with windows on three sides. Sunlight streams through billowing curtains and flowers reach inside, dropping petals that glisten and glow on the hardwood floor. As the breeze subsides and the curtains fall, I see Scully by one of the windows. I go to stand behind her, and she leans into me and we both look out at the garden…

Some time later, feeling rested and whole, I awake to find myself on the sofa, and Scully, asleep and shivering, on the floor beside me, her hand holding mine.

"Oh, Scully," I groan, fragments of dreams coming back to me. She must have come downstairs when I —

I sit up and help her onto the sofa beside me, draping the afghan from the far end of the sofa around her shoulders. Her eyes open and she looks at me, still groggy, and then she gasps as her arm starts to come back to life.

I rub her arm gently, helping her blood to circulate again. She closes her eyes, trying not to wince. Gradually I move to her neck, kneading the stiff muscles there. Her skin warms under my fingers.

"You okay?" I ask.

"Better now. You?"

"At your expense, I slept very well," I confess.

"Mm?"

"I've had that dream before. I usually scream myself awake." Under my hands, I sense the tension of a question she doesn't know whether to ask or not. After a while I go on, wanting her to understand, to know what had happened and why. "When I have that dream, I can usually trace the trigger back to something…extremely stressful, something I've been agonizing about that I can't help, have no control over. Like a decision that's been made for me that I don't accept."

She breathes deeply. "Or like me," she says, her voice even.

"Or like you," I agree quietly. "But I heard your voice, and it changed the end of the dream, it…took me to a place that felt like home. A house that I'd never entered before but a window was left open for me and I went inside. And you were there. We stood together, looked at sunlight in a garden. I felt such incredible peace."

After a while she says, "I'm…glad I could help. I didn't mean to intrude — I mean, interrupt — "

"It's okay. The nightmares…much as I'm reluctant to admit it, they're part of who I am."

She leans back against me briefly, just as she had in my dream, and then she stands, looking down at me. There's uncertainty in her eyes, as if she's not sure whether I need to be alone or if there's anything else she can do.

I'm grateful for her sensitivity, and wish we could talk about what happened. But I tell her, "I have one more thing to finish up first."

She gives me an "I understand" smile and asks matter-of-factly, "Got any coffee around here?"

"Pot's in the dishwasher. Coffee's in the fridge."

She heads for the kitchen. I put on my glasses and put the files in some sort of order.

A while later, after I start faxing my report, I get up and follow her, but instead of going in I stand in the doorway, watching her. She's standing in profile, holding on to the edge of the counter, her weight balanced on one foot as she waits for the coffee to finish brewing. She yawns widely and closes her eyes, pushing her hair back from her face, utterly unselfconscious.

The word "defenseless" comes to mind, but doesn't really apply; I know what her defenses are, how quickly they can go up, what kind of strength she can call on. But this is a different Scully, not just from the one I see every day at work, but from the Scully I've held in my arms. She's…older.

It's true that from the moment she came back from her first field assignment, she was no longer the fresh-faced recruit straight out of medical school, all her illusions and hopes still intact. But she's always been younger than me, and I've never thought of her as aging. Over the years she's never been anything less than self-possessed, astute, dedicated, and so beautiful I had to refuse to see her as beautiful. But the skylight reveals in odd light and shadow the lines around her eyes and mouth, a slight hollowness in her cheek. And in this moment when she thinks herself alone, when she's unshouldered the burden she's usually never without, she looks exhausted to the bone.

She opens her eyes and looks at the coffee pot, her expression pensive. And as I watch, she — gathers herself together, I can't think of another way to describe it as I see determination and resolve in her face, see a calm neutrality assert itself.

I know she's getting ready to face me again. I can guess what it costs her. And I'm stunned by my reaction, emotion so strong and sudden I feel it literally wash over me.

Even as I long to find a way for her to rest even for a little while when she's with me, I wonder how this can happen to me, how pieces can fall into place like a kaleidoscope turned with a flick of the wrist. I see her with perfect clarity for who she is, not who she wants me to see, and I know, I _know_ I could care very deeply for her.

By the time I make my presence known she's the same Scully I see at work, the steel in her eyes, a weight back on her slim shoulders. She pours coffee for us both, hands a mug to me. She's being careful, not wanting to tip the scale we've precariously balanced with no promises, no demands, no pressure.

And between one sip and the next, I know I've fallen in love.

* * *

><p><em>Scully:<em>

His eyes smile at me over the rim of his mug as he takes a deep sip. I return the smile, and then lower my gaze, self-conscious. I don't want this to move too quickly for him, or for me. But then he takes my mug and sets both mugs back on the counter.

He tilts my chin up and bends his head to mine, and I'm startled at the gentle sweetness of his kiss. I've felt his passion, his need like my own, a hunger, demanding, insistent. But this… I've spent years building emotional distance, concentrating on duty and responsibility and proving myself over and over again. And one kiss disorients me and makes me doubt what I should be feeling.

Is it supposed to feel like — the end of pain? Like something inside me has stopped hurting and that this is how it's supposed to be, how it should always be?

I'm not supposed to be trembling and I am. I instinctively press against him, drawing from his strength. His arms go around me, and suddenly I know what I'm feeling, what he's giving me, and I return his kiss with a tenderness that surprises even me.

Gradually we make it back to the living room, shedding pieces of his clothing along the way, and finally my t-shirt as we sink down on the sofa, our mouths and then our hands exploring tentatively, touching, caressing, as if we're making love for the first time.

And maybe in a way we are, because there's no pain inside me anymore, and there's nothing I want to hide from him. I feel like I've taken a leap of unbelievable distance, like I'm floating free. And I know with all my heart that he'll catch me when I land.

I nestle against him, my eyes closed and my cheek pressed against his chest. "Is it too late to call in sick?"

He reaches for the phone, and smiles as he hands it to me.

FIN


End file.
